


Love Letters in the Sand

by moon_crater



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Alternate Summary: Lawful Neutral‚ meet Chaotic Stupid. Now kiss., Benny's a jackass, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, Established Relationship, Fighting, Kissing, M/M, Sort Of, Swank is tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 09:56:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16514123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_crater/pseuds/moon_crater
Summary: Benny's on a bender, Swank is on his tail, and they're at each other's throats. Just another beautiful day in the Mojave desert.





	Love Letters in the Sand

**Author's Note:**

> A legacy fill for the old kink meme, mirrored [on the new one.](https://newfalloutkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1168.html?thread=391312#cmt391312) The original prompt:
> 
> _According to the Tops' Tommy Torini, Benny goes on these benders...who's going to keep him in hand if not his faithful right hand man?_
> 
>  **Advisories** : Violence, alcohol use, problematic language typical for Fallout, one broad allusion to pre-war racism.
> 
> Also, Benny and Swank have a slightly adversarial relationship in this fic. A "friendly rivalry," "giving each other shit," "mild simmering resentment" sort of relationship. If you like your ships kind and gentle, with loving words and soft caresses, this might not be for you. If you like more of a slapstick _Looney Tunes_ vibe, hey, hey! Buddy, have I got an Acme product for _you_!
> 
>  **Notes** : As ever, thanks to SynthApostate, the best beta a goil could aysk fer.

* * *

“ _Without Mr. House, we’d still be wearing gecko skins, poking around the ruins with pointy sticks and scalping people for giggles.”_

* * *

He sold his armor when they reached the Strip. A year of hunting, searching for a fire gecko, recovering from the burns, tanning the hides, stitching it all up, reinforcing it again and again—it was status in the tribe, creating a work of art like that, but he’d have done it just for himself.

If there’s one thing that ain’t safe to have in Vegas, it’s status in the _tribe_. So he sold his armor for a lousy few hundred caps, and now he’s got nothing to carry him through the desert but a snazzy suit and a pair of shoes that let the sand in. When the sun gets real high, he halves even those meager assets, sliding out of his coat to sling it over a shoulder. If it feels a lot heavier out here than it does back in the Tops, he chooses not to notice. Wool ain’t allowed to weigh more on him than leather.

Swank is a good Chairman. He’s gotta be, knowing what can happen to the ones who slip. He chases skirts, safe ones, dames with big blue eyes and lots of teeth and no idea which end of a knife to hold, and when he cuts ‘em loose the worst they can do is pout. He eats brahmin steak and drinks good whiskey, and never thinks about the taste of fresh-caught game, or the way he and Benny used to sit in high places with a single scavenged beer, passing it back and forth between them.

“Damn it, Benny,” he says to himself as he tramps across the sand. Swank _is_ a good Chairman. He’s loyal to Mr. House, and he’s thankful for all he’s got, and he _wants_ to do it right. But he never had a choice about throwing away his entire life and moving indoors, out of the sun.

 _Benny_ had the choice. Benny chose to move the tribe into the city. And now Benny is the one who gets to duck his responsibilities and wander off to mope about the good old days. And Swank is the one who has to go chasing after him, because who the fuck else is Benny going to follow home when he’s falling down drunk?

That, and Swank’s the only one who knows where to find him. Who’d believe the head of the Chairman is poking around the ruins with a pointy stick? They all assume he’s holed up safe in some brothel with a girl or five. No one’s more committed to civilization than Benny—when he’s sober.

“I should just leave you out here to get stung to death by bloatflies,” he says, still talking to the empty air. Of course he won’t abandon his pal, they both know he won’t, and the longer he’s out in the clean desert wind, the less he’s able to pretend to himself that he wants to. Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass to have to keep doing this, and yeah, he’s got a business to run, and a mountain of work piling up in his absence, but—

With no one around to catch him at it, he takes a deep breath of that pinion-scented air and feels months’ worth of tension slide from his shoulders.

Jesus, he needs a vacation. A real one, not babysitting a drunk.

But—Swank sighs and starts walking again—before he’s allowed to have one of those, he has to babysit the drunk.

After awhile, he starts seeing evidence of a trapper dotted across the landscape. Must be getting close, he muses, as he logs each man-made mark on the desert one by one.

Deadfalls, with their precariously balanced rocks propped up ready to drop, and only half of them structurally sound. Rope snares with familiar, sloppy knots. Crooked wire nooses hanging from upright poles, already full of unlucky squirrels. The foot tracks around them are all uneven, drunken zigzags that favor one leg in a way that speaks of an old injury instead of a fresh one.

Even without those markers, Swank would know who’s to blame. Benny loves his traps, always has, even if he’s never been any good at ‘em.

Swank follows the line in this tribal connect-the-dots. It takes him all the way to a canyon and what might have been a place for people once, but is now a bunch of blistered wood and piles of rock and a graveyard marked only by rings of stone in the dirt. Ghost towns, they called them in the pre-war, back when they were still recognizable as towns, and he’s always sort of wondered what they should call them now that even the ghosts are gone.

In the middle of the ruins, he finds a half-rotted slat of wood stuck upright in the sand. Someone’s gone at it with a pocket knife, gouging the sort of crude drawing that wouldn’t fly in Mr. House’s Vegas, but that would keep the Boot Riders cackling around the campfire like idiots for a day or two. Swank might laugh if he were still a Boot Rider, but he’s not, so he doesn’t.

He puts one hand on his hip and surveys the collapsed buildings, what’s left of concrete foundations, and all the surrounding natural outcrops that block out some of the sun.

“Benny!” he says to the seeming nothing that he knows is listening.

The nothing giggles.

He wants to wipe his hands across his face, maybe tear out a couple of handfuls of hair while he’s at it. Benny’s already at the giggling stage. Swank’s getting too damn old for this shit.

He’s got no time to show his stress. A whistle splits the silence, and before he consciously thinks about what that means, his heart jolts inside him. He moves. Swank shifts his weight to the balls of his feet, ducks and pivots as a spear whips past him to lodge in the wall to his left. _Way_ to his left. He didn’t even need to dodge.

The sudden surge of adrenaline makes the pulse thunder in his ears, but he keeps a cool head.

“You missed,” Swank calls up to the source of the throw.

In the silence, the butt of the spear droops as the old wood loses its grip on the spearhead. In a matter of seconds, it clatters into the dirt. Jesus, he didn’t even throw it hard enough to stick.

There’s a rattle of pebbles as Benny lurches into view from behind a boulder. He grabs onto the rock with both hands and tries to look smooth, like he ain’t tripping over his own two feet.

“Maybe I wasn’t aimin’ fer you, pally!”

He disappears again.

With a sigh, Swank drops his coat, then peels his shirt sleeves up to the elbow and buttons them there. He ain’t dressed for chasing down his dipshit leader, but what the hell. If Benny’s as drunk as he looks, it ought to make them even.

He crosses to the fallen spear and picks it up. It’s got the same old heft he remembers, the one that calls out for calluses he ain’t got anymore. The calluses Benny never had, because he prefers knives and rocks and looking people in the face to sensible things like distance and caution.

Benny likes to think he’s a scalpel instead of a sledge, but Swank knows better. He’s slippery, good at looking for angles and nimble when things go sideways, but he lacks the patience for true subtlety.

Swank surveys the immediate area and picks out the most likely bits of cover among the boulders and outcrops and rubble. He evaluates how much safety they offer, how easy they are to get to. Then he ranks them one to ten, from most obvious to least, and picks out the four because that’s about Benny’s speed. He eyes what’s left of it—a wooden shack, with half a crumbling stone chimney—and catches the tip of a boot peeking out from behind it.

Swank picks through the nearest pile of rocks and pockets a couple of decent ones; he ain’t about to waste his only weapon on drawing prey out of hiding. “You got to the count of three, Benny.”

No snickers. No clumsy skittering of rocks.

“One,” he says, and lets fly with two stones. They strike the wood, as loud as the spear would have been, and Benny rolls out of his hiding place to avoid what he thinks will be a good skewering.

“What happened to count-of-three?” Benny squawks.

“I lied.” Swank jettisons the spear in an arc that intentionally falls a foot short of its mark. After all, he ain’t _actually_ trying to kill Benny, even if he does entertain the idea on occasion. It’s still close enough to put a good scare into him.

Not such a scare that he’s paralyzed. Benny snatches up the spear, and Swank darts around the corner of the shack, putting as much distance and cover as he can between himself and the lunatic. Neither of them wants a corpse on their hands, but winging each other is fair game. Last time Benny pulled this shit, when he was sober and Swank was exhausted, Swank took one in the leg and almost bled out. He ain’t having that again.

Knowing Benny won’t be far behind, Swank eyeballs his most likely avenue of escape, around the side of the next building and up a hill to higher ground. He could pull it off, maybe, but there ain’t much cover that way. Instead of running, he takes the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and throws it as hard as he can in that direction, then squeezes through a hole at the base of the wall.

A good tribal would read the way the cigarettes have landed and spot a ruse. A lazy asshole would assume they’ve been dropped by accident and go charging up the hill, giving the quarry time to catch his breath.

Swank’s pretty sure he’s bought himself a minute or two, but he’s too wary to count on it.

He’s standing in what used to be a store, one of those places they called a tourist trap, where they’d stop unwary travelers and force them to buy overpriced junk food and useless trinkets. Ten caps extra to view the wax museum. If he had time, he’d go looking behind the counter for potato crisps and beer, but he don’t like how exposed the room is. There’s a storage loft mostly intact above him. That looks better.

He makes it up the ladder without disturbing the two hundred years’ worth of rust eating into the steel. That’s the only way up, and Benny ain’t slick enough to climb it without making a racket. He’s safe turning his back to it.

There’s not much room to move up here. The loft is crammed full of “Authentic Old West” weapons, toy six-shooters and rubber tomahawks. The packaging on the ones closest to the single window has been bleached bone-white. But the few that have been protected from the sun show two pre-war kids, both laughing as they murder the shit out of each other. Looks like Benny’s idea of a good time.

Swank peels off his shirt and wraps it around the handle of one of the tomahawks. Crouching low, he passes the fabric across a corner of the window. From the ground, it’ll look like a shoulder. This is the quickest way to know if Benny’s still on the right trail. That fucker may be clever, but he ain’t smart. If he thinks he sees an opening, he’ll take it, whether it’s to his advantage or not.

Sure enough, the next moment the spear smashes through what little glass is left in the window and lands at Swank’s feet. Then Benny yells, “Three!”

“You’re supposed to _count_ to three,” Swank yells back.

But he ain’t mad. Now he knows where Benny is, _and_ he has the spear.

He jumps down from the loft, one hand on the ladder to control his fall, the other gripping the spear. Benny’s in for it now. He won’t be able to find much of a hiding place before Swank catches up to him, and when he does…

Swank’s thinking of what he’s going to do to his boss. He’s thinking of the need to get back outside as quick as possible and put Benny on the defensive. He ain’t thinking about how much Benny loves traps.

He throws open the front door, and a bucketful of sand dumps itself in his face. Before he can process that, the bucket slams down over his head and _somebody_ bangs it sideways with what feels like a club.

“You’re it.”

Ears ringing, Swank stabs the spear in the voice’s general direction, but he only catches air. When he lifts the bucket and shakes the sand out of his eyes, there’s no one there.

“I’m already ‘it,’” he says to the emptiness. ‘It’ is the man with the spear. That’s always been how this works.

The emptiness doesn’t answer back. Not to argue the point, not to make fun of him for getting his bell rung, ring-a-ding-ding. Everything is silent. Swank lingers in the shadows, listening for the settling of a few stray grains of sand. Or, more likely, a series of muffled thumps and curses.

It doesn’t come. A hot wind picks up and stills. Somewhere, far enough away that it ain’t a concern, a gecko calls to its mate. Nothing else.

Swank waits. Unlike some cats, he knows how to bide his time.

The wind picks up again, carrying the scent of cactus and old wood and something like watermelon vine. But this time, it comes with the soft flap of fabric, like a flag would make. _If_ there was a flagpole in this place.

He edges toward the sound. It happens again, so faint he hardly hears it. Sticking close to the wall, Swank stays mindful of the sun’s position in the sky. The last thing he needs is for his shadow to announce him before he’s ready—like someone else’s does. A man-shaped patch of darkness stretches out from around the corner of the building, wavering on the parched earth like it’s trying to contain a fit of laughter.

Another gust of wind. Another flap. A typical, impatient rustle from somewhere a ways back and higher up. Swank smirks and tightens his grip.

He waits for the rustling to settle down. Eyeballs the shadow and figures the distance for where Benny’s shoulder ought to be, relative to where Swank stands. He don’t want to hurt him for real, just poke him a little. Enough to make him rethink pulling this crap again.

When he’s sure Benny’s settled, Swank leaps around the corner. His eyes catch a flutter of black and white. The spear flies from his hand. “Ha!”

The spear connects, and Benny’s jacket valiantly takes one to the boutonniere. Only...Benny ain’t inside it. Swank’s target is Benny-shaped, it’s got his lousy sense of style, but it’s just a piece of wood stuck in the ground. Half a foot taller than the man himself, with a lumpy gourd on top that could pass for Benny’s square head.

Typical. All that careful planning, stacking the deck in his favor, only to have Benny start playing with dice.

He doesn’t even have time to think _Fuck!_ before a scatter of debris rains down on him and a body collides with his back. Where the fuck was Benny hiding, a pocket dimension? Swank crumples, thumping to the ground under the sudden weight. His chin smashes into the sand and scrapes hard enough to leave a burn. The wind gets knocked clean out of him and sends dirt flying; into his eyes, up his nose. Some even finds its way in between his teeth.

“Ha _ha_!” the slab of meat on his back crows. One-upping his pal, like the smug shit he is.

With a grunt, Benny scrambles up and off him, ready to grab the spear. Swank almost hooks him by the pant leg on the way up, even while he spits and sputters to clear all the sand in his face, but misses by an inch. Damn it!

By the time Swank struggles to his knees, Benny’s got a grip on the weapon. Sweaty, smirking, he yanks it; it jerks his arms taut, but doesn’t come loose. He tries again, same thing. One more time, more frantic than the last.

Real panic drops into his eyes when Swank finds his feet and charges at him, but Benny brings up one boot and plants it square in the middle of his chest. It ain’t enough to knock him back, but it’s enough to hold him at bay while Benny tugs and tugs and _tugs_ on the spear. They strain for a few tense seconds—the unstoppable force, the immovable object—until Swank seizes him by the ankle, hard as he can, and _twists_.

Benny goes ass over elbows, crashes into the ground with a _thud_ and an _oof_. It’d leave Swank at an advantage, except the jostle makes the spear pop free. From his prone position flat on his back, Benny swings the pointy end at Swank’s head. He’s got enough time to snag it in mid-arc, but it comes _awful_ close to his throat.

Only when it screeches to a stop do they both realize the spearhead is _gone._ They whip their heads around to see it gleaming in the sunshine, still sticking out of the fake Benny. Of course, it makes no difference to _real_ Benny; he turns the surprise into an advantage and kicks out at a kneecap that buckles out from under Swank and dumps him back on his face. Shit!

Grunting, Swank scrabbles in the dirt, kicking up sand while Benny takes a whack at him with the spear-turned-stick. He narrowly avoids getting his brains bashed out but good, and soon he’s on top of the drunken shithead. Benny laughs.

Swank’s got two fistfuls of Benny’s shirt in his hands when he realizes...he don’t smell bourbon on Benny’s breath. Or tequila. Not even beer.

“You asshole! You ain’t even drunk?!” Swank shakes him hard enough to bump the back of his head into the ground. “I’ve been going easy on you!”

Benny doesn’t care he’s about to get throttled; he’s fucking _delighted_ by the fight, like a kid in a candy store. He takes another crack at Swank’s skull.

“You’re gettin’ soft, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal!” Benny chortles when the stick connects and knocks him sideways. He rolls over in the sand away from Swank and sits up, ready to take another swing when his victim comes at him for revenge.

But instead of throwing himself back into the fray like Benny obviously expects, Swank pushes himself up off the ground and leans away out of clobbering range. The vibe between them changes, charged with something tense all of a sudden. He’s done playing.

Benny’s frown ain’t a pout, but it edges awful close. “Aw, c’mon, Swank...”

Swank sends a hot glare his direction and nothing else.

They sit there in silence with six feet of empty, angry space separating them. Benny with his legs folded into a pretzel; Swank with his knees up to his chest, hands resting on ‘em.

“Swank...”

Swank ignores him.

“Swaa-ank.” Benny holds the stick across the gulf of sand stretched between them. It sways in the air, unsteady, until he pokes Swank in the side with it. Gentle, but insistent.

He jerks his body away. “I ain’t talkin’ to you.”

“You sure? Those sounded like words to me.”

Poke.

Poke.

Pooooooooooooke.

Swank snatches the stick. “Knock it off.”

To compensate, Benny puts some force behind the next poke. It turns into more of a _jab_. “Oh, so now we’re talkin’?”

“Knock it off, _you shit._ ”

The anger in his voice echoes off the canyon walls. Benny winces.

“Oh, so now we’re _yellin_ ’. You sore ‘cause I won?”

Swank looks at him long enough for another exasperated glare. “It ain’t a win if you cheat.”

“Sure it is.”

“No it ain’t!”

“Yes it is.”

“No it—” Swank pinches the bridge of his nose. “Why do you do this?”

“Because it’s fun.” Benny jabs him again. “You do _remember_ fun? How ‘bout fresh air? Heard of it?”

“The Tops is fun. You want fresh air, you step out the door, you don’t lead me on a chase halfway across Nevada.”

“Like you’d follow me out the door if I didn’t lead ya?”

Swank gapes at him; works his jaw while he tries to pick out a set of words insulting enough to smack Benny with.

“You heard me.” Benny rolls the stick between his palms. “See, there’s this guy I know, never goes outside. Spends all his time cooking books, pinching caps, micromanaging every. Little. Thing. Wound tighter than an eight day clock. Two to one, he’s gonna pop his cork.”

“Hey, fuck you, pal. I get out plenty.”

“Oh yeah? When’s the last time?” Jab. “You ain’t even a Chairman anymore, you’re a stack of paper with legs.”

“Boy! You got some crust, pretending you do this shit for _me_.”

“Of course I don’t do it for _you!_ I do it for me!” Jab, jab, jab. “And you gettin’ that stick out of your ass once in awhile is a bonus. Call it a return on investment.”

“Somebody _needs_ to have a stick up his ass!”

Benny’s brows rise. The corners of his mouth curl.

“Somebody has to be _the grown-up_ ,” Swank amends, pressing his lips into a line. “It sure as shit ain’t gonna be you. I can’t afford to be fun.”

“You forgettin’ who signs your paychecks? You can afford anything you want.”

“You don’t handle the money, you clod! _I_ handle the money!” He grits his teeth, knowing he’s still playing Benny’s game with this back-and-forth. He doesn’t have to rise to the bait, and this rat knows damn well his problem ain’t about caps, anyhow.

Benny’s stick wavers and starts to creep toward Swank’s nose. He shoves it away. Benny tries again, and Swank takes hold and gives a sharp twist that wrenches it right out of Benny’s hands. He smacks the free end into Benny’s ribs, hard enough to send his old pal over backwards, and then tosses it aside, at a distance neither of them can reach without a fight from the other.

“Oh, real mature, Swank,” Benny wheezes, clutching his side.

“Says the man with the poking stick.”

“Yeah.” Benny coughs pathetically. “Well, maybe you need to get poked.”

“And you think you’re the man to do it?”

“Yeah, me. Who better?”

That hangs in the air between them. Swank lets it, gives Benny time to digest his unspoken disagreement. If he needs to get ‘poked,’ he can think of a few cats who fit the bill, but this thing with Benny don’t work like that. It’s complicated. Benny hates to make things easy.

Swank lunges. There’s nothing in his posture to give away the move before it comes, and Benny’s taken the cue to sit back and relax; even though he should know this is coming, he can’t do more than flinch back before Swank has him by the arm and the front of the shirt. Buttons scatter, and Benny yelps, “Hey!” like he has any damn right to be surprised. Swank catches a glimpse of flesh.

Even caught off guard, Benny’s canny enough to move with Swank, not against him. Instead of getting thrown, he pitches himself sideways, slithers out of Swank’s grasp, and rolls to buy himself some distance. He leaves part of a sleeve behind.

“Jesus, Swank! I liked this shirt!”

“You couldn’t have thought of that before you dragged me out here?”

Benny dives for the headless spear. They’re done with tribal tag, with its strategy and its spaces to breathe. Now he just needs something to keep him from getting his ass beat.

He gets the stick in hand, barely, and tries to tumble with it. Benny’s about as graceful as a blood-gorged tick, the way he flops over on the ground, but that’s no surprise. He’s less limber than he was at twenty-two. Hell, they both are. Seven years of Vegas lays heavy on ‘em, in gouty joints and tarry lungs.

That doesn’t mean Swank being a little out of shape is going to save him. He flings himself across the sand before Benny can recover his balance and flattens him. There’s a guttural shout when Benny gets pinned, and he tries real hard to get the stick into a position where he can swing it, but he can’t quite manage.

Swank grins savagely. The bastard ain’t had time to get a hold of one end of the stick. He can’t use it like a club, he’s got to use it like a staff, with his hands sort of braced in the middle. Benny’s never been much good at that. All Swank has to do to win is drape himself across it and go limp.

Benny’s solid underneath him, but the barrel of his chest has a lot of give. Maybe once there were hard planes and washboard abs, but they’ve been living inside so long, the sharpest edges have been rounded off. Swank ain’t one to judge, that’s true of both of ‘em to different degrees.

No matter how much he struggles, Swank’s dead weight is too much for Benny to fight against in their current position. He tries, really gives it his all, but the stick collapses and clips him under the chin.

They’re chest to chest now, legs tangled. Swank can feel the dull thud of Benny’s heart through the thin layer of his shirt, even as Benny sweats and strains and tries every dirty trick he’s got. He heaves and lists and shoves with all his might.

But there’s no way to get out from under a full grown man bearing down with his full weight, not with a wooden rod pinning his elbows to the ground. He could let go of the stick, but then Swank would steal it, and he can’t have that.

They’ve reached a stalemate. Swank smirks, hovering inches from Benny’s face. Tobacco brown eyes meet his, flit away, then bounce back and stick. Benny’s trapped and he knows it.

“You give up, you shitheel?”

“Let’s call it a draw,” Benny grunts. Swank scoffs.

“A draw? You call this a draw? You lost. You got nothin’ left, Benny-boy. Give up.”

“Oh, ho ho.” Benny’s voice is flat, deadpan. “That so?”

Benny crashes up against him and captures Swank’s mouth in a hungry, impulsive kiss. It ain’t exactly a surprise, given Benny’s underhanded nature and the shape of their past, but it shatters his composure just the same. The molten heat of his mouth is familiar; it smolders like the desert, like a campfire, like burning neon. It tastes like before Vegas and after Vegas and every time in between.

Their history is littered with kisses like this: given in moments of opportunity, stolen in inconvenient spaces. Slow and lingering in the dark during a night watch. The hurried slide of lips in an elevator to the Presidential. Shaky breathing and urgent hands in a hundred places and times, stretched across at least a decade. Often enough that they’re closer than friends, seldom enough they ain’t quite a couple.

They drift together, they fall apart, they sleep with other people. A mobius strip that repeats and repeats. This kiss is every ending and every beginning they’ve ever had.

Swank knows better than to fall for this. It’s the oldest con in the book, one Benny trots out when he’s up against it and needs an out. It’s cheap and tacky, lazy and easy, stupid and ill-considered. In other words: _Benny._

It still leaves Swank breathless when he tears his lips away. He gasps and draws back enough that Benny can’t try that again.

They lie like that for a minute, staring at each other, gulping air.

“No...?” Benny ventures, with a skeptical, smug look in his eye.

“You _still_ lost,” Swank snaps.

But it doesn’t stop him from crushing Benny’s mouth under his own.

* * *

Later, long after they’ve done away with the evidence of rowdy sex and folded away any tender feelings, Benny digs up a bottle of beer from somewhere. It doesn’t even have a label, so it’s impossible to know what kind, but that doesn’t matter much. Booze is booze.

At sunset, they find a west-facing rock big enough to hold ‘em both and pass the bottle back and forth like old times. Swank stares out across the vast horizon toward Vegas. Benny sighs at the sky, at all that pink and purple and orange bleeding into each other; it’s a sigh that sounds like goodbye.

“You got this out of your system?” Swank asks. “You ready to go back and do actual _work_?”

“For now.” His shoulders bunch up into a shrug. “Next week? Who knows.”

“You better last longer than a week, you bum. I ain’t doin’ this again.” Not until his bumps and bruises heal, anyway.

“Yeah, yeah.” Absently, Benny plucks at his shirt collar where it gapes open. “You owe me new buttons.”

“Oh? Take it out of my pay. If you can manage that much math at a stretch. Here, I’ll get you started—two plus two is four. Four plus four is eight. You still remember what the account books look like? Where we keep the caps?”

“All right, wiseguy, you made your point. _Maybe_ I been spending a little too much time...” Benny circles his hand in the air.

“Mooching? Sponging? Freeloading? I can keep going.”

“I was going to say ‘Maybe I been spending a little too much time on the big picture, leavin’ my best buddy in the lurch.’ But if you’re gonna be a heel about it...”

“What, you’ll do _less_ work? Ain’t much of a threat, pal.”

Benny sighs in a long-suffering way, like he’s got a right to feel put upon.

“All right, already. You got my solemn oath.” Benny puts his hand on his heart. “I’ll take an interest. Start bein’ more _hands on_ in my management style.”

He grins like he’s got a secret. Swank don’t trust that, but there’s no thread to tug that’ll unravel the mystery, so he lets it go. Whatever idiot plan has seized his brain, Swank will find out soon enough when it's time to dust him off and clean up the mess.

“We square?”

“You’re still a bastard.” Swank puts the beer to his lips and takes a pull.

“Sure I am. But c’mon, baby, look on the bright side.” Benny plucks the brown bottle out of his hand and lounges back on the rock. “I’m _your_ bastard.”


End file.
